Thursday, April 7, 2016

Tenessee

Last moth was our first trip to Nashville in nearly three years. The primary purpose was to visit our cousins, but I also planned on getting some herping in.
Eastern Newt Notophthalmus Viridescens
Unfortunately, I was not able to upload most of the photos from the trip. I took them in raw format and did not realize that my photo editor could not process them.
So to the trip. My herping this trip was restricted to the creek that runs through our cousins neighbor hood. It's a very pretty little creek that winds through the houses. It also has a surprising amount of wildlife. In the past I have found Snapping Turtles, Mallard Ducks, Water Snakes and wide variety of salamanders.
This time I was not so lucky. It was cold and windy, the snakes were probably underground. I got ou all walked down to the creek. We turned over a few rocks and found a couple of salamanders, but nothing more exciting. Over the next couple of days, I went to the creek every morning but found nothing new. 
On the second to last day, I walked further up stream them I had before. I was getting a bit discouraged and my shoes were starting to feel very wet and I was thinking about heading back when I turned over a rock and there was a Queen Snake. It was so cold that it did not even move when I lifted the rock. It writhed a little when I moved it out of the way so that I could replace the rock and take it's picture. Then it slithered back under the rock.

On this trip we also got to visit the Nashville zoo which has a great herp collection. Here are some of the photos from the zoo.
Bushmaster at Nashville zoo

Kangaroos at the Nashville zoo

Red-Panda at the Nashville zoo

That is about it as far as herps on this trip. Thanks for reading.
 

Hi everyone.
Sorry about the long delay ( Yeah, two years is kind of long). I became distracted with other interests and school. But the great thing about reptiles is that you can always come back to them.
I am going to start with a our latest trip to tenessee.